


The Only Difference Between Advocacy and Rabble-Rousing Is Press Coverage (and newsboy caps)

by VerboseWordsmith



Category: Panic At The Disco, The Young Veins
Genre: High School AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-22
Updated: 2010-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-13 23:17:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerboseWordsmith/pseuds/VerboseWordsmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryan takes his job as the high school newspaper editor very seriously. This means roping his best friend into helping with layout, convincing freshmen that the school paper is awesome, entering journalism contests and defending Cash Colligan's right to write and publish crappy short stories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Difference Between Advocacy and Rabble-Rousing Is Press Coverage (and newsboy caps)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the awesome little comment fic meme at [angelsandkings](http://angelsandkings.dreamwidth.org/8011.html) on DreamWidth. Beta read by the fabulous [themadlurker](http://themadlurker.livejournal.com/). We're going to ignore everything I got wrong about high school newspapers and yearbooks (specifically when yearbook stuff needs to be done). Also, the timeline might be a bit confusing. Normally there's an issue of the paper distributed around 2/1 and and the staff is working on the next issue, which is distributed around 2/14 (the annual Valentine's issue). Cash's story was published in the 2/1 paper and caused a stir and Ryan (and everyone else) decided to put out another issue for 2/7.

"Spencer," Ryan said.

"Dude, I'm not going to proofread that article."

"Spencer, please proofread the article so I can work my editorial piece and then get started on the rest of the submissions."

Spencer pushed his swivel chair away from the desktop to better look at Ryan. Ryan was perched on the edge of the long table, feet on a chair and slightly hunched over the laptop he borrowed so frequently from the school library that the assistant went out of his way to try and keep it out of regular circulation among classes doing research. He looked slightly stressed out, more than he usually did when the school paper deadline came around. Spencer supposed that made sense, since the [Wikofff Scholarship](http://www.studentpress.org/nspa/contests.html#Wikofff) deadline was so soon.

"Ryan, I'm in the middle of laying out the front page. Cassadee's article on the graphic novel unit in Mr. Way's art class is a stupid length and making it harder than it should be. It needs to be like, five lines shorter or three paragraphs longer. Maybe if Jon or Tom can get a photo?" Spencer trailed off, thinking. A big enough photo with like, a long quote from Mr. Way might make the difference. Fucking freshmen who had no idea how to write articles. Well, Singer could write. Sometimes. And Cassadee was pretty awesome, actually and she got her friends to write for the paper (though, Jersey's treatises on Blink-182 reuniting, Twin Peaks, Apple products, and MAC eyeliner leave a lot to desire. Ryan's lj has better written Blink fangirling and comparisons of eyeliner) but even after a couple of months she couldn't write articles that worked with the layout. Whatever. Spencer would figure it out like he did every issue. He rolled back to the desktop, putting in a placeholder image.

Spencer had never intended to join the school paper. He hadn't, as a matter of fact. Ryan had joined his freshman year, inherited the editor's job from Patrick Stump, and proceeded to spend the majority of his weekday afternoons working on stuff for the paper. Spencer started hanging out after school in the classroom the school paper shared with the yearbook kids because it was more interesting than catching the bus home alone and waiting for Ryan to get back and hang out. Freshman year Spencer's homework hadn't been enough to keep him busy until Ryan decided to go home so he'd started helping Ryan out. Somehow this developed into Spencer spending a disturbing amount of his free time at school, working on the stupid paper with Ryan. He'd also gotten to know a lot of the yearbook staff pretty well. They all spent a lot of time in the room and tended to borrow each other's resources pretty freely. Hence the yearbook staff stealing Tom Conrad from the paper pretty regularly and Spencer constantly stealing the good rolly chair from them and now using one of their computers.

"InDesign being a bitch again?" Jon Walker asked, leaning over Spencer.

"Our computer hates it," Spencer said flatly. "We need to get a new one if there's ever money in the budget for it." He craned his neck up to look at Jon. "Maybe if the yearbook complains about us stealing their computers all the time Schechter'll give Wentz enough money for a new one?"

"Yeah, no," Jon said. "We're working with crappy digital cameras that've needed replacing for at least the last three years and that hasn't happened yet. So I don't think you'll be getting a new computer anytime soon."

"Fucking InDesign," Spencer said.

"Fucking InDesign," Jon agreed. "Want to use it for an entirely different project?"

"What've you got in mind?" Spencer asked, saving the file. Last thing he needed was to lose an hour and half worth of work. He glanced over at Ryan, who was still hunched over a laptop, typing furiously. Spencer wasn't entirely certain what Ryan was working on. He'd been pretty quiet all afternoon, just typing and occasionally demanding that Spencer switch between Something Corporate albums in iTunes. It was possible he'd started editing submissions, but unlikely. Ryan always took his editorial pieces very seriously, but this one was a huge deal.

Their high school was part of the National Scholastic Press Association which was apparently some kind of big deal. The only interesting thing they did was give out awards and scholarships. Spencer was for anything that gave out free money, especially if they might give it to Ryan for writing some awesome editorials. Ryan rambled on about the Wikoff Scholarship a lot and he had the grades and he'd had everything ready to mail in two weeks before the due date when Singer inadvertently brought hell down on the school. Singer had encouraged Cash Colligan to submit something to the paper (Spencer was pretty sure this was an attempt to compete with Cassadee for the editor's job next year-Singer was willing to do just about anything to beat Cassadee for the job, though Spencer didn't understand _why_ either of them wanted it. Whatever, he tried not to judge). Cash, being Cash, had submitted what could kindly and generously be called a story with erotic themes to the fiction section. No one was amused by this.

Principal Schechter wasn't happy that Ryan had run it. Ryan and Mr. Wentz both stood by the decision because the freedom of speech was the freedom of speech. Cash's story lacked taste (this is what offended Ryan) but that was no reason not to publish something. Cash's story did increase circulation for the paper, which was awesome from Spencer's perspective—he put hours of work into the damn paper every week and he wasn't even part of the staff (never mind that Ryan listed him as the layout editor and unapologetically published album and concert reviews Spencer wrote on his myspace), but backfired when Ashlee Simpson's crazy conservative dad got a hold of it and brought it to the attention of the school board—the chairman of which was Kevin Jonas, Sr. who was possibly even more conservative than Ashlee's dad. Cash had been suspended for almost a week and several people were demanding that Ryan be suspended.

Spencer thought the whole thing was stupid, but he did have to agree with Ryan that it was kind of cool that the whole school was talking about censorship and stuff like that. Ryan thought that all of this needed a proper response from the paper and that it'd make a excellent third editorial for the Wikoff Scholarship. Like so many things in Ryan's life, it was an great idea that Ryan maybe couldn't pull off. His editorial had to be published before February 15 for it to count, which meant they'd had to move the newspaper deadline up a week (meaning they'd miss the the Valentine's content they usually got to bulk the paper up) which was making everyone's life more stressful. Ryan was kind of an idiot.

"You should help me figure out how to lay out the basketball team page. And I just swung by the auditorium to get some candids for the drama club page. You should help me pick photos."

"You just want an excuse to look at photos of Brendon," Spencer said. "But sure, I'll help you. I need a break."

____

Ryan was not freaking out.

Sure, he had a staff of two and half (Spencer refused to consider himself part of the newspaper staff, but Ryan counted him. Singer was mostly useless but technically part of the staff so Ryan had to count him) and that always made getting more than about five articles and an editorial done every two weeks difficult at the best of times and now certainly wasn't the best of times. Still. Ryan wasn't freaking out. He was concerned. Worried, even. But not freaking out. The world was not going to end if Ryan couldn't get everything edited and focus his attention on this issue's editorial. And even if he did get to it, it wasn't going to be the end of the world if it sucked. Really.

Ryan maybe had to admit to himself that he sucked at pep talks as he highlighted a sentence that just did not make sense. Ryan liked Ian, but Ian was not the most articulate person in print. He was pretty sure Ian had smoked up with Alex Johnson and Chris Faller before they went to the student written and directed play fest and then written reviews. Ryan was almost positive that Mr. Blackinton wouldn't have let the drama kids do plays _that_ incoherent.

_"And halfway through the mayflies had an awesome dance party to this crazy version of the classic and ever-excellent punk classic "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" and I thought it was a great choice because it was like their first date, except not because they're mayflies. Johnson thinks it was too obvious and Chris says that whoever added in the cricket chirps should be shot, but they had a cricket dj so it totally made sense. Anyway, then they had an awesome dance party and the girl mayfly hit the boy mayfly (who had sparkley blue wings-I totally want a pair, except the green ones on the mayfly dude who like ran across stage and died while they were watching David Attenborough narrate about the common mayfly-it was super meta-but anyways. Awesome green wings) with her wings and then—"_

Ryan gave up. He would have thrown the article across the room in disgust, but it was a computer file. So that would have meant throwing the laptop and Mr. Trohman probably would have been pissed about that and stopped saving a laptop for Ryan to borrow. "Fuck it," Ryan muttered and closed out of the file. He had about fifteen hours to write the best editorial about censorship his school and the NSPA had ever seen and to put together an awesome bonus issue of the school paper. He could totally do that.

Forty-five minutes later, Ryan was debating between a semi-colon, a comma and an em dash in his second paragraph. He wasn't entirely sure he was going to keep that sentence in the final draft, but he wanted it to be punctuated properly. He'd just about made a decision when he heard Spencer's laugh and then he heard that traitor Jon Walker say something before succumbing to honest to god _giggles_. Ryan grit his teeth as the pair stumbled in, Jon leaning heavily on Spencer as he clutched his stomach.

"Do you mind?" Ryan asked coldly. "Some of us have deadlines and real work to do."

Jon looked hurt and seemed about to respond before Spencer cut him off.

"Ryan, don't take your issues out on Jon."

"I'm not taking my issues out Spencer, I just want to work in peace." Ryan narrowed his eyes slightly and made an abortive gesture that might have been towards Jon. "Because I have a deadline and something that's actually important to work on."

"I call bullshit. You're stressed out and bitching at Jon to displace it or whatever is pointless. And the paper's editorial is not more important than the yearbook," Spencer said, sounding a bit exasperated.

"Hey now," Jon said. "The yearbook and the paper are both important."

Ryan just glared at Jon. His stupid yearbook was _pointless_. Who the fuck cared about high school nostalgia while they were still in high school when crazy conservatives were in control of the school board and trampling down on students' right to free speech? Also, Jon just took _photos_ of sports teams and the stupid drama club and he kept stealing Spencer from the paper and Ryan hardly ever got to see him because Spencer kept running off to hang out with Jon and Ryan so did not have time for this.

"I don't have time for this," Ryan said coldly. "In case you hadn't noticed, the administration is backing the school board in ignoring students' rights. That's kind of a big deal and I need to address it so if you both could kindly _fuck. off._ "

"For the love of—Ryan!" Spencer practically yelled, stalking over to Ryan's table. "Stop being a dick to Jon. He just took a bunch of stuff we can use in the paper, let me interview him about a couple things to flesh out articles and talked Tom into e-mailing me a photo essay thing he did on graffiti art which is like, connected to this whole freedom of expression thing we've got going on. Once you get your editorial done we'll have a full paper now. An _awesome_ paper. So stop your bitching and write."

Ryan blinked. That was really good news. Really, really good news. Cash's suspension was really unfair and the whole debate about his story was stirring up a lot of problems—Ashlee Simpson's dad was making noises about making a teacher the editor of the school paper and also looking at other "unwholesome" influences in the school, like what books the English department could teach and what sort of projects the drama and art departments could do. No one was happy about this and Ryan (and Mr. Wentz) wanted to tap into this. _That_ was why Ryan decided to move the next issue of the paper up a week. The Wikoff Scholarship was an added bonus. Ryan didn't have to write a perfect editorial or put out a perfect paper, but he wanted to publish the best things he could. He'd been really worried that they'd be even shorter on content than usual, even with Cassadee and Singer leaning heavily on their friends to send almost anything in so they could justify an extra issue and support the articles Mr. Wentz, Ryan, William Beckett, Mr. Way, and Travis McCoy had written about censorship, artistic expression and students' rights. There was even a sort of vague theme among this week's random submissions—Ryan could argue that Ian's disjointed review and Chris Faller and Johnson's shorter and more blunt reviews of the student play fest were connected to the larger themes of the issue.

"Whatever," Ryan said abruptly. "So you're not totally useless even when you steal my layout editor." Ryan wasn't going to apologize to Jon. He was a dirty layout editor thief. Ryan went back to his editorial. With the addition of Tom's photo essay and Travis McCoy's piece about artistic freedom in classes, Ryan had the inklings of a new way to talk about why he'd decided to run Cash's story.

Jon appeared to understand that this was the closest he was going to get to an apology. "Well, I'm glad to help out. I think it's cool that you guys are standing by your principles and defending Cash's right to write awful stories. And Spencer managed to talk Tom into publishing his photo essay. I've been trying to get him to share that photo essay for months. It's awesome and basically no one is seeing it on his photo blog. So, thanks for running it. Seriously."

"No problem," Spencer said. "And thanks for helping us out. It's really cool of you. Unless you want to stay for the layout party—and I use that word as sarcastically and ironically as I can—you should probably head out before the janitor calls the cops to tow your car."

"That happens?" Jon asked, surprised.

"Yeah, it happened to me and Ryan like two months after Ryan got his car. We stayed really late to finish up a paper since we had a way home and someone was there about to take Ryan's car and we found out that we needed to let Jim—the evening janitor—know if we were going to be here after like, 6pm. Turns out drama kids get a pass on that since Mr. Blackinton tends to keep them pretty late the closer they are to opening night or if they've got jocks in the cast."

"Huh," Jon said. "Well I'm definitely taking off then. Hang on to the camera overnight so you can upload all the photos. If Tom hasn't e-mailed you his thing by like, eight, text me so I can tell him to send it. I'm heading over to his place now."

"Cool," Spencer said.

Ryan cleared his throat. "Tell him we say thanks."

"Sure," Jon said as he finished grabbing his things and left.

___

Spencer stretched as best he could in a squeaky office chair. Ryan had gotten up a few hours earlier to turn on all of the lights in the classroom and get dinner from the vending machines in the lobby (sour patch kids, fritos and Coke for Spencer, doritos, oreos, a pack of peanut butter m&ms and a Dr. Pepper for Ryan). They'd worked through most of Muse's albums, the first Green Day album, a mix Jackie or Crystal had made of bad 90s pop songs, and part of the Moulin Rouge soundtrack. Spencer was completely done with front page, the local and national news pages, the arts page which had a lot to say about the drama club (Spencer had snickered a bit when he got to Ian's review of the play fest) and one of Jersey's impassioned rants about the genius of David Lynch and how Twin Peaks was the most important show of the 1990s. He was mostly done with the first section of articles about Cash's story and freedom of expression and he'd gotten a good start on the letters to the editor.

Spencer was _so close_ to being done.

He could totally take a break. Ryan had written furiously for about an hour after Jon left before going back to copy editing. Spencer was curious about the new editorial. He'd seen most of the original one, but he was under the impression that Ryan had scrapped most of it. His muttering suggested he had, at least. Spencer had a couple things to finish and he needed to get the photos he'd e-mailed to Cassadee for editing back. Someday the school paper was going to have more than one crappy desktop computer. Then he could call the rest of the staff in the do actual work. Spencer was also waiting for Singer to e-mail him a small fluff piece so there wouldn't be an awkward white space on page four. Those and Ryan's editorial were all that was left. They might be able to get out before midnight.

Spencer admitted defeat and stood up to stretch out properly.

"Hey, Ross, I'm getting a snack. You want anything?"

Ryan made a distracted sound. Spencer walked over, figuring Ryan was in artiste mode and ignoring him. "Ryan, I'm getting food. Want anything?"

Ryan finally looked up. His eyes seemed slightly glazed and Spencer figured he'd been spending way too much time staring at the laptop screen without a break.

"Food?" Spencer prompted again.

"Uh, yeah. Um, get me a...something with caffeine. And like chocolate? I'm really close to finishing this, Spence."

"Awesome," Spencer said as he patted his back pocket to make sure his wallet hadn't fallen out. He called home to let someone know that they were still at school and seemed to be wrapping up. His mom told him to tell Ryan that she'd set up the air mattress in Spencer's room.

"Thanks mom," Spencer said. He started yawning in the middle of it. He contemplated the vending machine choices. He was depressingly familiar with what they offered. His mom told him that there were leftovers in the fridge and to call again at eleven if they were going to be any later.

"I will," Spencer promised as he got himself and Ryan Mountain Dews. He and Ryan spent way too much time at the school working on the paper. Spencer's mom said goodbye and he started back to the classroom. When he got back, Ryan was a little wild eyed and sitting a the desktop.

"What happened?" Spencer demanding, praying the laptop hadn't crashed or frozen, losing all of their hard work.

"I just pasted in Singer's thing."

"What?"

"I finished it."

" _What?_ " Spencer asked.

Ryan broke into a huge grin. "I pasted in Singer's thing. And just got Cassadee's photos. We're done Spence, I finished. Well, we've got to add in Cass' photos and do one final check, but we're basically done."

Spencer beamed. "Awesome! Let's finish this shit and go _home_ , Christ, we've been here for forever. C'mon, move. Let's do this."

It took longer to finish than they'd like. Adding the photos in wasn't a big deal, though Ryan had to adjust a column on one page to make things fit better. Doing the final check for typos and weird placement issues took longer. Still, they were done within the hour. Spencer saved the file, zipped it and attached it the printer's e-mail.

"This is it dude," he said, mouse hovering over the send button.

"Fucking send it already," Ryan said impatiently, smacking Spencer's hand off the mouse and sending it himself. It took a minute to get confirmation that it sent and once it did, Ryan collapsed kind of bonelessly against Spencer.

"And we're done," Ryan said.

Spencer cheered a bit raggedly and Ryan sort of half hugged him.

"Wooo," Ryan said and then kissed him.

Spencer started and knocked an arm into Ryan. He pulled away—

"What the hell Ryan?"

Ryan looked kind of dejected and Spencer realized how that must have come across.

"I just—you didn't have to, if you don't, I. Sorry," Ryan said awkwardly.

"No! No, hang on. I'm not like rejecting you. Well, I mean, if you're offering, I'm not rejecting but if that was just like an expression of like, affection and uh, tired happiness that we're done with this issue then just ignore me. Right now. As I babble and stuff. Um." Spencer wished the universe would oblige him just this once and maybe swallow him whole. Or maybe obliterate this from Ryan's memory if his expression was anything to go by.

"Um," Spencer said intelligently.

"...Can we try that again?" Ryan asked quietly, not really looking at Spencer.

Spencer let out a breath. "Yeah, yeah let's do that again."

They did; Ryan's lips were a bit dry and he was hesitant, way more hesitant than he was with any of the girls Spencer had seen him kiss. Spencer leaned in a bit more and deepened the kiss. He hit Ryan's nose but didn't really care because Ryan's lips parted and then he shifted to better kiss Spencer. He slipped an arm around Ryan's back to guide him closer and into a better angle for making out. Ryan didn't break the kiss as he shifted to straddle Spencer's lap. That was totally awesome (more awesome than kissing Ryan, fuck he was kissing Ryan who was _good_ ) until the chair rolled back and hit the table behind them.

Spencer made an undignified sound while Ryan lost his precarious balance and almost fell onto the floor. Spencer caught him and it too Ryan a moment to move into a better position.

"Well this is awkward," Spencer said.

Ryan just looked at him before cracking up. Spencer grinned into Ryan's shoulder.

"So we're kind of stupid," Ryan said.

"We really are," Spencer agreed. "Well, you're a moron. I have been helping out with your stupid paper almost every night since I got to this school. Like, I've given up all of my free time to hang out with you and do editing and layout for three years. I don't even like the paper and I'm doing this for you. I even stayed at school until two a.m. that one time to finish an issue. That was like a grand gesture or whatever and you're kind of dumb if you didn't get that."

"Oh," Ryan said.

"Yeah," Spencer replied.

"...how long have we been basically dating without like, making out and stuff?"

"Fuck if I know," Spencer said. "C'mon. Let's go home. My mom saved us leftovers and insists that you spend the night."

"Yeah?" Ryan said.

Spencer grinned. "Yeah. Grab your stuff. I want to do things we've apparently been missing out on for a stupid amount of time because we're kind of stupid."  



End file.
